


One Foot In

by fullmoonhermit



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Birth, Childbirth, Dr. Watson Catches Some Babies, F/F, Gen, Pregnancy, granola lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:04:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullmoonhermit/pseuds/fullmoonhermit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John Watson is a midwife, and Sherlock is a nuisance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Foot In

**Author's Note:**

> This fic features semi-graphic descriptions of childbirth. Approach with caution. Originally posted as a fill for the following kink meme prompt: http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/17487.html?thread=104551247#t104551247
> 
> I'm certainly not a medical professional, so if you see errors, feel free to let me know.

When John gets a call at 3:28 in the morning, he's actually at home for once and not out on some mad run-around with Sherlock. It's Rachel this time. Her contractions are relatively far apart, but she's a young, first time mum. John knows if he doesn't go right over, her partner will be calling him every twenty minutes.

He's up, packed, and out the door in ten, with a quick goodbye to Sherlock

_("Right, I'm off then."_

_"Bring back the placenta."_

_"Absolutely not."_

_"I don't understand what you have against the scientific method."_

_"_ Goodbye _, Sherlock.")._

It's pouring rain outside, but the cab is a warm, rumbling cocoon. John dozes, leaning into to the window.

He never imagined this career for himself. He'd been up to his elbows in dead men, almost as many suicides as enemy casualties, and everything around him was pure bloody misery. People dying, people living without limbs or full brain function, people trying to die but failing.

One day, he'd been brought along to a raid when a nearby woman went into labor. John had a basic medical understanding of childbirth, but little practical experience. The woman in question had been exhausted, dehydrated, and couldn't move the fetus down. John was about to perform an episiotimy when an Afghan midwife elbowed him out of the way, spoke low and serious to the birthing mother, and had a squalling, sticky infant in her arms twenty minutes later. John had been shocked at the power of it, the peace that suffused the entire room when the baby emerged. An island of calm amongst chaos. As he watched the infant latch on to his mother's breast, John realized that he'd quite like to be fucking useful for once.

Of course, he spends another six months knee deep in trauma before coming home to his sister's alcoholism and his own limping PTSD. On the weekends, he signs up for midwifery school, the only man in a room full of heavy breasted older women who feed him gluten-free brownies and wear socks under their sandals. But they're kind to him, giving effortless support, free of pity or condescension. John understands immediately why women trust them with their pain; choose them over the distant, patronizing doctors on the hospital circuit. To this day, he still feels a kind of comfort when he smells patchouli and Burkenstock.

The cabby drops him off at a smallish London flat, and Melanie, Rachel's wife, ushers him in. She's smiling at him, but it's got a bit of a manic edge, that mix of anxiety and excitement new parents wear on their faces.

"She's been having contractions for a few hours now. About fifteen minutes apart."

"Right, thanks. Rachel in the bedroom?"

John finds her there, straddling a yoga ball, looking jolly and relaxed in a purple nightshirt.

"John!" she greets him, wearing a huge grin that makes him beam right back. "I'm going to have a baby today!"

"Oh was that today? Sorry, I've got the shopping to do. Mind putting it off 'till tomorrow?"

She laughs gamely, and John shifts some of the makeup on the dresser to make room for his supplies.

"Hop off the ball for a bit so I can have a look at you."

Melanie helps her move to a sitting position on the edge of the bed while John snaps gloves on.

"How're you managing then? Nothing too painful yet?" he asks her as he kneels and nudges her knees apart with his elbows.

"No, though the pain's been coming in my back. Is that normal?"

"Mm. It can be, just depends." John makes a mental note to check the position of the baby.

"Breathe for me."

He reaches inside until the tips of his fingers brush the spongy tissue of her cervix.

"Three, maybe four, centimeters. Not bad considering you're a first timer."

"Hear that love? Top marks," Melanie kisses her cheek.

John pulls out and takes Rachel's vitals. Uses the fetal doppler to check the heart rate, then presses his hands to Rachel's abdomen to feel for the baby's position.

"Looks like he's gone and flipped 'round on you, Rachel. Probably why you're feeling so much in your back. If you want, I can try and move him, but sometimes they go back on their own."

"No, that's--" she cuts off with a hiss and John feels her abdomen tighten like a clenched fist under his hand. He holds her there while Melanie strokes her back, waiting her out. Slowly, the muscle releases and she exhales, opening her eyes to give him a rueful look.

"As few interventions as possible, that's what I want. The baby's safe?"

"Perfectly safe. Even if he stays posterior, we can manage it alright, though it'll be tougher on you."

Melanie looks distressed at this but Rachel merely gives him a decisive nod.

"Leave it then."

So he does. He tells them to have Rachel walk around to speed up labor and gives them some privacy. In the kitchen, Melanie's elderly mother is kneading bread dough while her grandson (a child from Melanie's first marriage) slurps juice from a Moomin sippy cup. John reckons he's about two or three.

"Tea, Dr. Watson?"

"Love some, thank you."

He sits across from the toddler, both of them looking at each other as they drink.

"Bit late for you to be up, isn't it, mate?"

The boy blinks sleepily at him, kicking his feet.

"We couldn't get him to go down, I'm afraid. Too much excitement."

"I know how that is," John tells her, thinking of Sherlock.

"Oh? Do you have a child of your own?"

"Yeah, a gigantic infant. Whinges constantly if you don't give him attention. Have to come up with all sorts of things to keep him occupied."

"Have you tried jingling your keys? Brandon adores that. Sits on his grandad's knee, giggles for hours."

John stifles his laughter under a cough.

"Can't say I've tried that one. I'll have to give it a shot."

After that, they sit in comfortable silence. John closes his eyes, listening to Brandon suck and Gran flip the bread dough with a smack. Childbirth is a waiting game for the most part, and John's place in it is an assistant's job at best. He's good at filling that role. Just like with Sherlock, trust the other to lead you, provide a bit of back up, step in if things get dodgy. Odd though it may be, John gets the same heady rush from a successful birth as he does from a case solved.

He checks on Rachel again, now holding steady at four centimeters. John teaches Melanie to press firmly on Rachel's lower back. People tend to think laboring women have to be treated with kid gloves, but John has found that most either want strong, firm hands on their aching muscles or no touch at all.

Granted, it's different with every birth.

Some women want him in the room the entire time; others want a little seclusion--the animal instinct to be in dark, private spaces when vulnerable. Some mothers invite every family member and their neighbors to stare between their legs. Some do it completely alone. He's worked for a woman who spoke not a lick of English, a transgendered man, a few disabled mums. Delivered twins, breeches, preemies, the rare but horrific stillborn. He's helped birth babies on boats, in cars, in attics and cramped caravans, even in back yards. Met all sorts of people. He thinks of the soldiers he treated in Afghanistan or even the people he doctored while still on rotation in the hospital, a string of faceless bodies to fix or discard. Even the murder cases, which satisfy his need to flirt with danger and destruction, start to blur after a time.

Meanwhile, he gets thank you letters attached to photos of school age children with gaps in their teeth. Keeps them in a box by his bed, next to his L9 and Sherlock's cigarettes.

Another cup of tea, an hour of infomercials about knives, some inane texting with Sherlock.

_(Lifespan of the average Himalayan Persian? - SH_

_Not a vet. Google it. Do a lot of murderers use kitchen knives?_

_Only the dim ones. - SH)_

The sun rises. People start to pull out of their driveways for work.

Back in the bedroom, Melanie and Rachel are dancing, arms round each other. The only sounds in the room are the humming Gregorian chants of childbirth. John kneels down behind them and stills Rachel's swaying hips for a moment, checking her progress.

"About seven centimeters," he whispers to Melanie.

"Oh that's wonderful," she responds, nuzzling her wife's temple. "John, would you mind stepping in for a moment? I've had to use the loo for the last half hour."

"Of course; give her here."

They gently transfer Rachel from Melanie's arms to his, and she drapes herself over him, a solid, unapologetic weight. Her hands clutch at his neck, squeezing and releasing reflexively. John rocks her and hums with her. She presses her ear against his chest, apparently enjoying the lower vibrations of a tenor voice. Contractions come and go, hums morphing into louder moans and back down again, and John rubs hard circles into her back at their peak. At one point, she lifts her face to look at him, and he smiles at how blown her pupils are. She's in a completely different headspace, cresting the waves rather than going down with the undertow.

"Hullo, John," she says.

"Hullo, Rachel," he replies.

She sighs gustily, pressing her cheek to his chest again.

Eventually, Melanie returns, and John lets go of her wife's warm, lax body almost reluctantly. The lazy rhythm of her labor high is contagious and addictive.

This time, he turns the telly off and dozes on the couch. He wakes to Melanie shaking his shoulder and telling him something, but John's experienced ears latch onto the sounds from the bedroom. Low moans morphing into high, sharp screams. Panicked breathing.

"--ere of course. It just got so intense all of the sudden."

Which means she's either progressed very quickly or something's gone pear-shaped.

He's greeted by the sight of Rachel on her elbows and knees, mashing her face to the floor in agony. He goes down beside her.

"Rachel, try and tell me what you're feeling."

"Oh God, it hurts. It hurts and it won't _stop! **Please.**_ "

His chest aches at the begging, but he moves behind her and lifts her nightdress.

"I'm going to check your progress, love. Bear with it."

John presses inside and tries not to feel like a complete bastard when she shrieks. The baby's moved down, John can just feel his head through the bag of waters and Rachel's cervix. Nine centimeters, which means she's likely in transition. Time to get things calmed down.

"I need you to listen to me now," John says, gesturing Melanie over. Together they get Rachel up into a sitting position, resting in the triangle of Melanie's thighs, supported by her chest. John sits cross-legged in front of them and takes hold of Rachel's trembling hands. He squeezes them tight and she responds with a vice-grip Bruce Lee would be envious of.

"Breathe with me."

"I can't," she sobs out, whipping her head.

"Yes, you can, just follow my breathing. Rachel," he sharpens his tone to get her attention, "Look at me. C'mon."

He inhales and she follows haltingly.

"Good, now breathe out. That's the way."

They breathe together until her hands relax inside his and the anxiety in the room ratchets down a notch.

"Nine centimeters. You're very close, Rachel. Just have to get through this shortest, toughest part. Melanie and I are going to help you through it, alright?"

She gives him a nod, but she's trembling, and John pulls her to his shoulder to let her bite down and cry out some of the fear.

In the next hour, they move her into what seems like a dozen different positions, pant in her face, massage her hips and back relentlessly, moan with her, find a hundred different ways to tell her she's good, she's wonderful, she's almost there. They become three parts of a whole, every cell focused on the task at hand. Her nightdress is discarded in a corner, and Melanie's shirt joins it later. John barely notices.

At one point, Rachel takes hold of his arms and locks eyes with him, glaring into his face with a look of complete, unrelenting focus. That hard gaze locks him down for a solid three minutes.

It's one of those moments that forces John to see the true intensity of women. The reserve of power they hold within them, rarely unleashed; mental and physical reserves they were built with to take up tasks like this one. He's in awe of it, even as he feels feeble in the face of that power. It's probably part of why many men can't handle being next to their partners while they give birth. Being pushed into helplessness and confronted with the fact that their sweet wives have such animal force inside them.

But John's good at being uncomfortable, thrives off high-intensity situations. And he can't help but love a little insanity. There's nothing more insane than watching someone push a human being through an orifice.

When Rachel's long moans start morphing into short grunts, John checks her again. Fully dilated.

"Are you pushing, Rachel?" he asks, and from the confused look he gets, he might as well be speaking Swahili. She's deep deep down in her own mind.

They get her into a squat and John feels her internal muscles clamp and flare out as she grunts. Pushing then, and quite hard. John gathers up a few supplies and camps down in front of her. She looks like some sort of primal goddess statue, her powerful thighs holding up her naked and suddenly massive-seeming nude body. John and Melanie orbit her planet of a belly.

As she moves out of transition and into the second stage, John sees awareness creep back into her eyes. Controlled pushing's going to require some forethought, and her mind instinctively moves out of its trance state.

"There you are," he says and she gives him a weary smile.

"I'm so tired."

"I know. You've been through the wringer. Your body should pump some adrenaline into your system as we get going."

She pushes for awhile, sleeping between contractions. John oils and stretches her perineum and chats idly with Melanie. After an a quarter of an hour has passed, he decides to break her waters to move things along before Rachel falls into a coma.

"What's that?" Melanie asks, alarmed at the sight of the medical tool.

"It's an amniohook. I'm going to yank the baby out by his nostril, y'see. Very high tech."

Rachel snorts as he maneuvers the hook inside and tears the amniotic sack. Fluids gush out onto his hands. John wonders if he'll ever live a life where he's not constantly interacting with bodily excretions. The semen samples in his freezer say no.

"Ohhhh, that feels so much better."

"Yeah, it should ease the pressure for a little while at least."

Things pick up after that, and soon John starts to see the head. A pound's worth of dark, wet hair blinking in and out with contractions. He fetches a mirror to let Rachel look at the progress.

"That's him?"

"It is indeed."

"Wow," Melanie breathes, her eyes welling up.

More of the baby emerges with every push. At one point, Melanie's mother and son come in to look, and John takes hold of the toddler's little fingers and presses them to the head.

"That's the baby, Brandon," his mother tells him, but Brandon looks decidedly skeptical and a bit bored besides. Gran carries him off to eat lunch.

An hour and a half into pushing, Rachel gets some energy back and has the baby crowning in no time.

"Ease off a bit, Rachel. Just pant."

"Shit!" she yells, shuddering.

"Burning?"

"--god, oh my _god!_ "

John takes that as a yes, and presses a warm cloth to her bottom.

On the next contraction, John coaches her to breathe through the pushing urge, and cups the head as it slowly slides out.

"Oh, look at him," Melanie exclaims.

John wipes down his eyes and chubby cheeks and pursed lips.

"Nearly there. One more contraction should do it."

Melanie and Rachel caress their son's face, eyes full of adoration. Half in the world, half out. John feels a pang of sadness, knowing what life does to human beings once they leave the safety of another body. But this tiny person will go from womb to loving arms. That's about as good as it gets. 

Another contraction takes hold, and John gently clasps the head between his palms.

"Harder now, Rachel."

One shoulder, then the next pop free, and with a massive yell, the rest of the baby rushes out. His left foot is the last to emerge. John places him on his mother's chest immediately, skin to skin.

Melanie is crying outright, kissing Rachel's cheek over and over. Rachel talks to the baby in a sweet cooing voice, a stark contrast to the aggressive woman who existed mere moments ago.

"Hello, lovely boy. Hello."

John wipes him down and wraps him up, encouraging the women to stimulate him with the blanket. He's to be named Sean, and his first cry pierces right through John's heart. Brand new life, brand new family. John washes the blood off his hands and thinks about holding guns, holding women, holding babies.

Later, both mothers and infant sleep soundly, and John has one last cup of tea with Grandmum and Brandon.

"They're doing well," he tells her.

"Of course they are," she responds, the wisdom of these things written in the lines of her face.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" he says to his tea cup. "It's never anything less than amazing."

She puts a hand on top of his, and John feels a rare moment of complete inner peace.

...before his phone buzzes.

_Don't forget the placenta. - SH_

John sends a quick 'piss off' before gathering his things and walking back out into the wider world.


End file.
